Market Insights 28 Jun 2023 3 min read

Engineering Hiring in the UK: Rising Demand but Persistent Skills Shortages

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UK engineering hiring is growing, but applications are falling, highlighting persistent skills shortages.

Salaries are rising, IR35 challenges persist, and visa access remains limited. Specialist engineering recruitment UK firms play an essential role here — sourcing nuclear, electrical, mechanical, and process engineering talent, and accelerating workforce placement where it’s needed most.

Engineering firms are increasingly looking to hire after a challenging start to the year, yet sourcing the required skills remains difficult.

Recent data from APSCo and Broadbean Technology shows engineering vacancies increased by 7% in May, while applications fell sharply, down to the lowest level in 12 months — a widening gap that specialist engineering recruitment UK firms are increasingly being asked to help close.

Salary Trends and Skills Gaps

Average salaries for engineering specialists have risen by 5% year-on-year as employers attempt to attract talent amidst the rising cost of living.

However, higher pay alone cannot resolve the skills shortage. Convenient access to international talent and flexible labour solutions are crucial, particularly for contractor hiring in specialist technical disciplines where day-rate flexibility often matters more to candidates than a marginal salary increase.

Employers who rely solely on pay to compete are finding it increasingly hard to stand out — the shortage is structural, not just financial, and needs to be addressed with sourcing strategy as much as budget.

Challenges in Nuclear and Technical Recruitment

Nuclear engineering jobs are among the hardest UK vacancies to fill, for reasons that go well beyond pay:

High demand for engineers with electrical, mechanical, and process experience.
IR35 restrictions limit contractor mobility from other sectors.
Delays in security clearance prolong onboarding, discouraging candidates.

Security clearance timelines in particular can add weeks or months to a hiring process, and candidates weighing up multiple offers are often unwilling to wait that long without clear communication and support throughout.

These pressures make technical recruitment in nuclear and energy one of the most competitive corners of the UK engineering market.

Recruitment Solutions

Experienced technical recruiters can help companies emphasise their employee value proposition and identify transferable skills to attract top talent.

Partnering with specialist recruitment firms is key to overcoming application declines and securing highly skilled engineers for nuclear, energy, and technical projects. This is exactly where a dedicated engineering recruitment UK partner earns its place — not just filling roles, but understanding the specific pressures behind why they’re hard to fill in the first place.

That includes advising on realistic salary benchmarking, structuring contract terms that work within IR35, and building candidate pipelines ahead of need rather than starting the search from zero once a vacancy opens.

What This Means for Employers

The gap between rising vacancies and falling applications isn’t likely to close on its own. Employers who wait for the market to correct risk losing ground to competitors who are already adapting their approach — whether that’s widening the candidate pool through international sourcing, offering more flexible contract structures, or simply moving faster once a strong candidate is identified in an already tight market.

For businesses hiring into nuclear, energy, and technical engineering roles specifically, working with a recruitment partner who already understands the sector’s clearance timelines, IR35 landscape, and salary expectations can shave real weeks off time-to-hire compared to running the process alone from scratch.

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